Did you know?
The whaleshark was not officially discovered until 1828 by Dr Andrew Smith, off the coast of South Africa
Whale Swim Watch and Wonder Tour
A full ten hours in length (or more), this tour is for people focussed on doing everything they possibly can to experience swimming with a humpback whale – whilst taking advantage of any opportunities to swim with a whaleshark that arise too!
Everything about the tour is designed to maximise the likelihood you will get to swim with a whale. This is basically a numbers game. Our spotter plane stays up longer most other tours, finding us the best pods of whales for us to approach – usually these are resting whales or the ones moving slowly through the ocean. The better quality the pods of whales we approach, the more drops of whale swimmers we can do. The more drops of whale swimmers we do, the greater the likelihood our whale swimmers will actually get to swim with a whale during their tour.
The tour is also ideal for serious whale-watchers and serious photographers, with our skipper committed to provide as many quality opportunities as possible to see the whales just 50m away (which is 50m closer than anywhere else in Australia!) and to take great shots of their surface displays from the vantage points of our flybridge or sunlounge on the front deck.
Our crew is on watch continuously too, looking for whales, whalesharks, manta rays, dolphins, dugons and more! Your experienced in-water guides (all professional dive-masters or dive instructors) work with our marine scientists to brief you up on humpback whales and the behaviours observed whilst whale-watching. And then you’ll be trained up in Soft In-Water Whale Encounters – it’s the best known way to swim with a whale. And its something Ningaloo Whale Shark Swim strongly supports and is focussed on continually getting better at. (Take a look at Swimming With A Whale for more information about Soft In-Water Encounters.)
Your tour also includes free swims with manta rays or whale-sharks we encounter. (Whale Watchers will need to upgrade to swim with a whaleshark.) And it includes you selecting the best of the photos taken by our Tour Photographer to take away for free to share with family and friends, and the option of purchasing high-rez portrait shots from your in-water photographer too – what they can do with experience, a great camera and lens and photo editing software is often stunning!
The cruise leaves from the West Coast, rather than from the Marina as this makes it MUCH more likely we’ll see whalesharks and mantas – and possibly orcas too! – during your tour. (And watching the sunset over the ocean not the land is also something many of our guests haven’t experienced before.)
